A look at China’s embrace of capitalism and how it gave rise to the authoritarian regime of Xi Jinping will be the focus of the next program in the Modern China Lecture Series, set for noon Thursday, Dec. 4, on Zoom.
Free and open to the public, it can be accessed at https://csusb.zoom.us/j/388207496.
Minxin Pei, professor of government and the George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College, will discuss his new book, “The Broken China Dream: How Reform Revived Totalitarianism,” with copies to be given away to Zoom attendees.
“The Broken China Dream” looks at China’s journey of modernization starting in 1979, when it began to turn towards capitalism, causing some to think that the country was moving away from its totalitarian past and toward a democratic society.
“Instead, China reverted to a neo-totalitarian state, one backed by one of the fastest-growing, most formidable economies on earth,” according to the book’s website. “‘The Broken China Dream’ pulls back the curtain on the regime of strongman Xi Jinping, revealing why the reforms of the post-Mao era have been reversed on nearly every front — and why the world failed to see it coming.”
Pei, who has been a guest speaker at past Modern China Lectures, is the Tom and Margot Pritzker ’72 Professor of Government along with being the George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. In 2019, he was the inaugural Library of Congress Chair on U.S.-China Relations.
Prior to joining Claremont McKenna College in 2009, he was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and served as its director of the China Program from 2003 to 2008. He was an opinion columnist for Bloomberg (2023-24) and the author of “From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union;” “China’s Trapped Transition: The Limits of Developmental Autocracy;” “China’s Crony Capitalism: The Dynamics of Regime Decay;” and “The Sentinel State: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China.”
He earned his Ph.D. in government at Harvard and has taught at Princeton University.
The Modern China Lecture Series was initiated in January 2014 to promote awareness of important issues related to China for those on the CSUSB campus and in the community. Since then, it has presented more than 100 lectures, workshops, film screenings and roundtable forums featuring China scholars from UC San Diego, UC Riverside, the Claremont Colleges, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Columbia, Oxford and other institutions, who have visited the CSUSB campus or joined via video conference to share their expertise and opinions.
Recordings of previous lectures are archived on the CSUSB Modern China Lecture Series channel on YouTube.
The lecture series is supported by Pamela Crosson and the CSUSB Department of History, the CSUSB President’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Board, and Lucy Li and the YOURS (Yotie Oso Undergraduate Retention and Success) AANHPI Student Achievement Program.
For more information, contact Jeremy Murray, CSUSB professor of history, at jmurray@csusb.edu, and visit the Modern China Lecture Series website for information on upcoming events.